There Is Nothing Left But the Ash – Adi Da Samraj – 1988

Editorial note:

Heart-Master Da has remarked that when
He speaks He is almost always talking about us. He rarely
speaks about Himself. He has humorously said, “I tell you
things on a need to know basis.” August 15,1988, was one of
those rare occasions when Da Love-Ananda spoke about Him
self. He said that He had read our signs and felt that there
was more that we “needed to know” about the significance of
His Death Event in 1986 before we could finally let go of
our attachment to His Teaching persona and understand the
nature of His present Work as Sat-Guru.

The occasion was sudden and
unexpected. Although Da Avadhoota was living at The Mountain
Of Attention, there had been no formal Darshan of Him since
July 9. The group of invited devotees was smaller than on
previous occasions this last summer, and so Heart-Master Da
elected to sit in the large downstairs room of Huge Helper,
the old Hotel lobby, which had been prepared as a Darshan
Hall at His request a couple of months
before.

As the talk begins, Heart-Master Da is
commenting on notes He gave earlier in the day, a summary of
which has just been read to the group before
Him.

THERE IS NOTHING LEFT BUT THE
ASH

A TALK BY HEART-MASTER DA

---

1.

HEART-MASTER DA: The “deeper personality” is a
term I use over and over again. It includes everything that
we call the subtle dimension of the being and what is called
the causal dimension of the being. It is not really “high”.
It is not really the “subtle”, you see. It is the deeper
personality. It exists prior to the physical. It is not
unconscious. It is functioning, conscious, but the body and
its brain have no awareness of it. You do not think its
thoughts. You do not have its memories. You do not remember
previous incarnations, usually. But even so, this deeper
personality is appearing. Its destiny is being manifested
through the present incarnation. Its tendencies are being
shown there. Just as the physical body itself shows its
lineage by looking like its parents, so this deeper aspect
of the personality demonstrates its qualities, its lineage,
its past, through a wide range of tendencies. Not in mind,
you see. It is the dimension of mind that is commonly called
the unconscious from the point of view of body-based
psychology. It is outside the brain.

Instead of appearing as thoughts, therefore, it appears
as tendencies, appearance, qualities. Physically any
individual looks like his or her parents, grandparents,
great-grandparents, back through time. But that individual
does not know those people, his or her ancestors, unless he
or she is informed about them, you see. If at birth you were
separated from your mother and father, you would never know
who your mother and father were, or your grandparents, or
your great-grandparents. You would have to be informed about
them.

The physical personality is not inherently aware of its
lineage. Why, then, do you expect the deeper personality to
be inherently aware of its lineage? And why do you as a
gross personality presume that you are a reincarnate? You
are not a reincarnate. The personality of which the typical
human being is aware is simply the gross personality, the
brain-based mind, the etheric energy, the physical vehicle
itself. This is what most people call “I”. That one is not a
reincarnate. It has no memories of past lives, because it
hasn’t had any past lives, only parents and grandparents and
great-grandparents. But the deeper personality has previous
incarnations.

The dimension of the personality that has past lives is
not something of which the physical personality is aware
ordinarily, but it is nonetheless appearing through the
physical in the form of tendencies. And it can come about
that there is a transcendence of grosser limitations and an
opening to subtler, or deeper, aspects of the being, in
which case various aspects of deeper experience may appear,
including perhaps the memory of previous incarnations, not
the previous incarnations of the bodily personality, but the
previous incarnations of the subtler or deeper
personality.

Even this deeper personality is not the ultimate Identity
of any being. The Very Self, or Divine Consciousness, is the
ultimate Identity, and this Consciousness is aware of both
the grosser personality and the deeper personality. Whatever
is arising, the same Self is aware of them. But in the
mechanics of manifestation the grosser and deeper aspects of
the being are in fact two different beings, so to speak, two
different mechanisms in the cosmic domain that coincide in
any present lifetime, but the deeper part is outside the
brain-mind. Its mind is not what you call “I” but a form of
mind outside the range of your experience except in the form
of urges, tendencies, destiny, operations at the level of
what is commonly called the unconscious.

DEVOTEE: Love-Ananda, as I look at You and Your
body, it feels that Your deeper being or personality is
reflected in Your physical body.

HEART MASTER DA: As in every case, it is reflected
there. The gross personality is in some sense a mirror of
this subtle or deeper personality in everyone’s case, except
that in most people the gross personality is dominant almost
to the point of excluding the deeper personality. Only
through greater evolution, greater development, do the
subtler and ultimately deeper aspects of the personality
begin to come forward and become more conscious and more
obvious.

You could say, then, in my case that what you may be
observing is the direct appearance of the deep aspects of
the personality as well as the gross aspects of the
personality. On the other hand, I am neither of these and
have been simply at work with these mechanisms. You can see
the history of that work, its various stages of development,
beginning with the birth itself. Then after the birth there
is the time I have told you about, in my second year or so,
of accepting the circumstance and the process that went on
from there, until sadhana became necessary, it seemed. A
great Urge appeared that produced the whole adventure
leading to the Vedanta
Temple.

But that was not the end of it. That simply was a sign
that the work with these vehicles had gone on long enough
that Teaching Work could begin. A sufficient transformation
of these vehicles had occurred for the Confession of
Awakening to be made in the context of this body-mind, gross
and subtle, or deep. But it was just the beginning of the
Work for which I had taken birth. It was the beginning of my
taking on and transforming the qualities of others through
this vehicle.

That is what I did for all those years of Teaching Work,
until the Great Event in 1986 in which all that was
accomplished by a unique Gesture, a Demonstration about
which all of you have heard something. Some of you were
around me at the time, heard me say things, observed me in
one way or another. And I have talked about it on a variety
of occasions over the last two and a half years or so, said
things about it that were intended to be revealing about it.
But I also called upon you all to consider it, show me your
response, show me your sign, indicate your understanding to
me. And there has been almost nothing in response. Just an
amazing creation of chaos has been going on here and no
response whatsoever, really.

Looking at this gathering as a whole, it seems to be in
many ways living in the past, in terms of being stuck in a
negative withdrawal over the last few years, and living in
the past in the sense of wanting to go back and do it all
over again or resume the quality of relationship that you
had to me in past years during my Teaching time when I was
trying to help you come to the point of being able to do
this sadhana fully. But neither one of those tendencies is
appropriate.

You all may be lingering in the reactivity and withdrawal
of the last few years, and I am here trying to work with you
on the basis of this Great Event in 1986, which you hardly
had the attention even to observe. You all want to associate
with me as you did in the past, and I am not even here
anymore in that form. Yet you persist, approaching me as if
I were, and dramatizing all your reluctance and
amateurishness, as if I am going to respond by Teaching
again, I suppose, or by letting you off the hook, or by
associating with you on some other basis than the demand for
real practice. And I am not going to do that. It is not
there to be done. It is not there to be repeated once and
for all with grand changes even in my own Sign. It is not
something than can be repeated, but it would not be fruitful
to repeat either.

Because of the accomplishment of this Great Work, a great
opportunity exists for you, for anyone who will practice,
but there is really nothing much that has been done about it
to date. I have indicated to you some very basic things that
would have to change. I am simply here to do the one do
thing that I Am. You all need to establish the Treasures.
You all need to establish an a culture, and a community
rightly serve practitioners. And as the basis for both of
those you must establish the first circle beyond the Kanyas
in this Mandala. In other words, you bring forward a
gathering of devotees who can provide an appropriate link
between me and practioners generally. I am looking for those
who can, who do, understand my Work, those whose
acknowledgement is true, those whose relationship to me is
right, those whose practice is exemplary, to those who
understand all these matters and can therefore rightly
commnicate it to others and align them to me rightly so they
can make use of me, even as beginners.

Fundamentally the Kanyas am only ones who do sadhana in
my ny, the only ones who maintain a intimate association
with me, Cdr accountable to me in their prate function as
devotees in my They are the only ones. All the rest have
left and are out there in re ness land or in the midst of
your reluctance, whatever it may be. T1q the only ones who
have continu d direct sadhana.

Everyone must do such sadhana. That is what the Way of
the Heart is all about. But the rest of the gathering has
not, to date, rightly and fully established link with me.
And that is, in some basic sense, what we are trying to
create here, a restoration of that link. To do so requires
establishing the Treasures, putting the institution, the
culture, and the community on the right track for the first
time really and it includes the coming forward of a
gathering of devotees.

DEVOTEE: Love-Ananda O wasn’t completely clear on the
distinction You were making between the in Awakening into
Sahaj Samadhi at Vedanta Temple and the Death Event in Fiji
in 1986, particularly in relation to what You are referring
to as the gross personality and the deeper personality and
how the sadhana changed, and how the sadhana developed
through the end of Your Teaching Work.

HEART-MASTER DA: I wouldn’t call it sadhana. I didn’t do
sadhana after Vedanta Temple Event. I did my Work after the
Vedanta Temple Event.

All aspects of this manifest personality, gross and
subtle, became capable of the great Confession in the
Vedanta Temple Event. That was full Awakening in the context
of this body-mind, gross, subtle, and causal. It wasn’t my
Enlightenment, so to speak. It was the product of my work
with this vehicle, all those thirty years, so that this
Awakening could be brought into the context of the body-mind
rather than simply be Prior to it.

After that Event my Teaching Work began. That Event
initiated the Teaching Work. It initiated a process. So did
the Death Event two and a half years ago. The Death Event
also initiated a process, which has been going on since, but
a different kind of process. From the time of the Vedanta
Temple Event until the Event in 1986 there was all that
Teaching Work, which was submission to others in order to
Teach. I used all the ordinary and extraordinary signs in
this vehicle, all the ordinary signs of the gross
personality, all the extraordinary signs of the deeper
personality, in a Play with others to Instruct and Awaken
them. I used my capacity to assume the likeness of others
for all those years to reflect them to themselves.

In that process of assuming the likeness of others in my
submission to them, the vehicle, gross and subtle, took on
all those karmas, absorbing all that likeness and ultimately
forcing the crisis of the Death Event in 1986, when the Work
ceased to be one of submitting to others, and my life in its
appearance ceased to be one of assuming the likenesses of
the grosser and deeper personality associated with this
birth. Whatever qualities there may be in this body through
its inheritance, and in the deeper psyche by virtue of its
inheritance, are no longer animated in any sense on their
own, so to speak. Such things are inherently karmic
entities. Their karmas are purified.

But in the Death Event in which, as I have said, all of
this was assumed by me to the toes, all that had been
inherited in this body-mind in this lifetime and previously
was likewise submitted, providing a unique vehicle for the
service of others, a unique nakedness of Siddhi, which only
devotees can confess. Find it out then. How much more do you
want me to tell you? If you come to me as a devotee and do
the practice in my Company, you receive the Gift. You tell
me what it is. You tell one another what it is. You find out
what it is.

You do not receive that Gift merely by coming into a room
where I happen to be, you see. You must do the sadhana. And
what you experience in my Company is based not only on the
sadhana but also on your current stage of availability, your
current stage of practice. You make room for this Blessing
by getting out of the way, by making the great submission,
by truly doing the sadhana, by entering into the real
practice in my Company, the true engagement with me, which
is real sadhana, not some abstract religion-business version
of it all, but the real sadhana, which requires you to give
up your conventional destiny. It requires you to do what a
human being should do, which is to submit all aspects of the
manifest personality to the Divine Condition in a process
that transcends limitations.

But instead of doing that, you see, human beings
ordinarily are submitting to their own apparent mechanisms.
They are deluded by their own energies, their own Shaktis,
so to speak, their own tendencies, their own vehicles of
manifestation. They are deluded by the gross personality,
and then if they break that up a little bit, they start
becoming deluded by the deeper personality, you see. They
move from being little egos to being bigger egos, and still
it is all the egoic process. It is all a matter of the
illusions of the cosmic display. What must be Realized is
the Divine Condition Itself, the secret of Which is Prior to
the body-mind, Prior to the gross and deeper aspects of
manifestation. It is Consciousness Itself, yes, but
Consciousness Realizing Its Inherent Condition.

I am here to serve that Process, to establish that
Process, to Awaken others if they approach me understanding
Who I Am and what my Work is, and if they are able to
seriously enter into the real and Great Process. If you will
not do that, then there is really nothing more I can do, you
see. I have done what I can do and said what I have to say,
and now it is completely up to every individual to make a
decision about the matter.

Do you have any more questions about the difference
between these two events?

DEVOTEE: I think You clarified it. Thank You.

HEART-MASTER DA: The Vedanta Temple Event initiated the
Teaching Work or the Work of submission to others. The Death
Event brought an end to the process of submission to others.
It initiated that time of my Work in which it is required,
obligatory, that people enter into the traditional
Guru-devotee relationship, that they make their submission,
that they respond to me and no longer require me to respond
to them as I did as Teacher. All that submission to others
became summarized in the Death Event in 1986 and was brought
to an end there, and now a new Work continues as a
potential, if people will make use of my Company. If they
will not, there is no Work going on. It is not that there
was one kind of Enlightenment in 1970 and another kind of
Enlightenment in 1986. I am not talking about my
Enlightenment! I am talking about your Enlightenment, Work
done for your sake, which appeared in different forms,
stages of Work for your sake at various points in my
apparent lifetime.

At the time of the Vedanta Temple Event that Work
produced one particular Sign, the Teaching Work. After the
Death Event another particular Sign appeared. Is there
anything about it that is not clear?

DEVOTEE: One of the things You said that was clarifying
for me was that the Process is revealed over time. I was
just thinking of Your own Teaching Work, how it began after
the Vedanta Temple Event. It took a few years for Your
Teaching Work to really take hold and then a period where it
became very animated and instructive, and You drew all of us
to You very directly and concretely. It was very useful for
me today to hear You talk about the Death Event as a process
also. It is a process, I feel, of Revelation for us because
there had been such a reluctance on our part to really
understand it and feel the significance of it so that we can
allow You to actually animate that Sign in its Fullness.

HEART MASTER DA: You won’t be able to understand it
really until what it requires of you becomes acceptable to
you. It carries with it an inherent demand, if you
understand it. If you say you understand it, you must do
what it requires. But you would rather put some mind in
between and not understand it, so that you can pretend you
are a beginner and do not really have to practice very much
yet and all the rest of it.

The psychology of not wanting to be obliged has a great
deal to do with it. More than anything else, I think, that
is it. You want things to be as they were and you want to be
let off the hook relative to sadhana. When sadhana becomes
the point and you become serious about it, then my Sign
becomes comprehensible to you.

As we just pointed out again, this Event in 1986
initiated a process, the first aspect of which was the sign
of penance, or “tapas”. Just as the Event itself was
associated with a death, or a giving up, its continued sign
for some period of time is the sign in some exaggerated
sense of tapas, or penance, beginning with the “sannyas”
time. All that had been accumulated was naturally, not
through some kind of effort, but quite naturally and
spontaneously, released, purified. The initial sign took the
form, then, of extreme detachment, and over time that
detachment became more normalized. It has not gone away,
obviously, but something about it has been absorbed,
understood, accommodated by you.

I did that initial work to the point that it was finished
and no longer necessary. The next stage came, which was the
stage of dealing with your neglect and abuse of this one.
That was last year, during the “Indoor Yajna” period, and to
this day I have endured your continued neglect and abuse,
and your apparent lack of understanding of what I am about,
what my Work is about, what the relationship to me is for,
and the reluctance on the part of practitioners to seriously
accept their responsibilities for the practice and for
everything that relates to the Treasures and for the
institution, the culture, and the community. There is a kind
of tapas I must endure by standing firm and raising my voice
as necessary, to simply make it clear that this is something
you are going to have to deal with, something you are going
to have to understand. I am not here to take a step back to
do the past again. The Way is here for you now as a demand,
a Calling, and if you want to respond to that Calling, you
must accept the responsibilities that come with it.

Is there anything more about that?

DEVOTEE: No. Thank You.

DEVOTEE: I realize that part of my reluctance has been a
misunderstanding of the process itself, which You have made
very clear, yet I have held out, in a sense, hoping that
somehow the past could be repeated. In fact what You are now
for us is merely Present. I realize that You have altogether
stopped making that gesture, that what actually died was
that gesture rather than a person. And I realize that what
we have to do is make a sacrifice…

HEART MASTER DA: It wasn’t that I decided not to make the
gesture anymore. I made it completely. The gesture was
submission to devotees, submission to practitioners,
submission to others, submission to the world. That does not
come to an end until death. Submission to death is such a
process. I didn’t decide to not do it anymore. I did it
completely, and my doing it completely forced another sign,
another demonstration, of this Siddhi that changed the Work
itself, changed the stage of my Demonstration and my Work
with others.

DEVOTEE: I realized that similarly we must die to the
gesture we have been making, or refusing to make.

HEART-MASTER DA: The gesture you have been making is
submission to yourself. So you have to have a “death event”
to submit to the Divine, submit to the Sat-Guru. You have to
change the course your life – which you have done not done
up until now. You all as a gathering have not done this
until now. You have been indulging in my submitting to you
for as long as you have known me. You figure that is just
something I do, it is just there, it is the way it is
supposed to and you all go on remaining rather superficial
and unresponsive. That has nothing to do with sadhana. That
has nothing to do with Liberation. That is foolishness, see,
worldliness. To do sadhana you must die to yourself in some
sense. You enter into the process of such dying submitting
your own body-mind to Divine, submitting your own body to
the Sat-Guru through the practice sadhana, submitting these
conditional mechanisms to the Condition that is Free of
limitation, to the Samadhi of the Realizer Himself, Which is
nothing but Samadhi. This is the ancient offering, the
ancient means.

But yes, you are right. A death, then, a throwing off of
your own egoity as the principle of existence and accepting
sadhana as your destiny. This is a great gesture. Each
person making this gesture may say it is an act of faith or
it is based on understanding. It is always both. Both the
heart-response and some intelligent consideration are
required in any case. It is just that some people, because
of the quality of the personality, say it is more the act of
faith, and some others say it is more the act of
understanding. This quality you read in yourself is
responsible for the choice later on of which of the two
basic approaches to practice you take up. But both of those
approaches are fundamentally the same, with just a somewhat
different emphasis.

Everyone who goes through this death makes this gesture,
makes it on the basis of faith and understanding,
spontaneous response and considered response, both. But in
doing so you submit yourself. You turn yourself in a greater
direction. You stop submitting to yourself, just as I
stopped submitting to you two and a half years ago. You have
to stop submitting to yourself if you are going to truly
live this practice in my Company.

What else about it?

DEVOTEE: I just want to say how grateful I am and what a
great gesture it is. I remember when I first saw You after
the Death Event in 1986, how absolutely beautiful and
wonderful You looked and how something obviously had
profoundly changed. It was a great sign and revelation to
me. And You continue to make that sign to us and make it
possible for us to make this gesture.

HEART MASTER DA: The one thing you may be observing is
that this body is not so much showing the signs of the
company it keeps anymore. [Laughter.] Or it is not
keeping bad company anymore, let us say. It doesn’t have to
endure that absorption. On the other hand, because you will
not use me rightly, I am basically living in isolation. You
are not using my Company. I am not interested in being
accessible to you if you are not going to rightly use my
Company. I am not here to absorb your limitations and
abuses, but I am here to be available to real practitioners,
people who are seriously here to do the sadhana.

You have to find such people and create the circumstance
of our association. All of that is your business, you see.
Until you do that, all I can do is wait and stay confined to
my quarters – which is what I am doing.

end of part one.

 Go to PART
TWO of talk